Losing Control

Canada’s Social Conservatives in the Age of Rights

Tom Warner

Losing Control takes a hard, critical look at Canada’s social conservative (religious right) movement and its efforts to re-establish Canada as a nation predicated on the supremacy of God. It explores the nature of social conservatism’s holy war on homosexuality and its efforts to secure more morality-based state regulation of sexuality and reproduction. For social conservatives, the ideal Canada would be a place where there would be no separation of church and state, or of faith and politics.

The book dissects the movement’s campaigns to eradicate secularism and “moral relativism” as defining features of contemporary Canadian governance and raises disturbing questions about the enormous political influence of the movement on Canada’s political parties—in particular, the Conservative Party government of Stephen Harper.

Contents

Introduction
1 Social Conservatism and the Canadian State
2 The Right to Life and the Right to Choice
3 Regulating Sexuality and Social Order
4 Anti-Gay Activism in the Age of Rights
5 The Defence of Family and Marriage
6 Conflicting Rights and Clashing Values
Notes
Bibliography

About the Author

Tom Warner has been a gay activist for over thirty-five years. He helped to found the Gay Students’ Alliance at the University of Saskatchewan, the Zodiac Friendship Society (later becoming the Gay Community Centre of Saskatoon), and the Gay Alliance Toward Equality, serving as the group’s president from 1976 to 1977. Tom is the author of the widely acclaimed Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada.